Jethro

Jose, Ignaco, Many thanks, again, for your replies.

From my perspective, since IE supports only mp3, it’s a no-brainer that our group’s eLearning material must supply that format.  That it is also a working format for Chrome and Safari (this iOS devices?) is an important side-effect.  I’d love to support Firefox, too.  However, it is a better assumption that users who have installed Firefox are capable of installing Chrome, too.  Or that they already have a browser that supports HTML5 playback of mp3s.  Therefore, if I have to choose one file format, I’d have to pick mp3 ahead of ogg.  Unfortunately, the eXe software only makes it easy to do the opposite.

The course material is not technical.  We can’t assume that our students will be able to install browsers or browser plug-ins.  As an organisation, we can’t offer the technical support that might be resulting from such needs.  The people who will generate the material from the existing Powerpoint slideshows might well have more technical skills – but avoiding things like hand-scripting is the reason why I’ve been asked to find software that will script the packages for us.

I have used open source software for many years.  I hate it as much as anybody when a user comes onto furums and bleats about bugs or feature requests.  I hope I don’t come across as someone like that.  Instead, is there a mechanism where I might contribute funds to the project generally or to a developer specifically in order to get the HTML5 dialogues coded to our (and everybody else’s) benefit..?

We do not have a lot of budget.  I would likely fund any work out of my own pocket.  But I’d prefer doing that to spending budget on a commercial alternative that still may not meet our needs.

Aha!

<audio width=”300″ height=”32″ src=”resources/Aims.mp3″ autoplay=”autoplay” controls=”controls”><a href=”resources/Aims.mp3″>resources/Aims.mp3</a></audio>

Manually editing the iDevice HTML to this works perfectly in Safari!  Awesome!  Except that leads to three further problems…

Firstly, I can’t assume that my fellow volunteers will be able to follow manual coding within the iDevice.

Secondly, the resource is only available because I embedded the Flash/mp3 in another eXe page.  Without being able to add it through the “Insert/Edit Embedded Media” dialogue, I think that eXe doesn’t include the audio file in the package unless I employ the (dirty) solution above, or manually add the file to the package later.  Whichever way around, this will not be an easy thing to explain to my fellow volunteers.

Finally, as per your link to the W3Schools page, mp3s won’t work in Firefox with HTML5.  Since we can’t force our students to all use Chrome, there’s no audio format that I could use that would work with all those browsers; both mp3 and ogg versions must be made available like the W3Schools example:

<audio controls>  <source src=”horse.ogg” type=”audio/ogg”>  <source src=”horse.mp3″ type=”audio/mpeg”>Your browser does not support the audio element.</audio>

Indeed, I could manually edit the HTML myself but cannot assume that other volunteers will be able to.  Is there any way to use the “Insert/Edit Embedded Media” dialogue to achieve this..?

Am I correct in thinking that without a revision of the eXe software, eXe is unable to provide the cross-browser support of audio files that is essential to our project..?  Sadly, I do not have the skills to contribute the code that appears to be required.  

I guess I would face similar issues when it comes to embedding video..?

Thank you both so much for replying so quickly!

Jose:  Not Opera.  MacOS with Safari.

Ignacio:  Sadly, this does not work.  With a fresh attempt on a clean new page at embedding HTML5/ogg, as soon as I press “Insert”, Safari gives me this message:

http://127.0.0.1:51235

HTML5 does not work in all browsers.

Selected file: ogg

Continue without changing your settings?

If I press “Cancel”, naturally I am sent back to the “Insert/Edit Embedded Media” window.

If I press “OK”, the media appears in the iDevice, as you might expect but on leaving the editing mode of the iDevice, the media player is frozen with a “Loading…” message.

Likewise, if I then edit the media settings, for example to include the autoplay parameter, the same error message is displayed; if I say “OK” to that, the attempt to change the setting is ignored in the HTML.

As per your post, I can confirm that the generated HTML is:

<audio width=”300″ height=”32″ src=”resources/Aims.ogg” controls=”controls”><a href=”resources/Aims.ogg”>resources/Aims.ogg</a></audio>

(OS and browser versions as per original post.)

Many thanks again for your help.  Is there anything else I might try..?